Source: Bonds tested positive for amphetamines, By: Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Giants outfielder Barry Bonds tested positive for amphetamines in the middle of last season and told several people on the team about it at the time, a major league source told The Chronicle today.
The positive test was first reported by the New York Daily News, which said Bonds initially blamed it on a substance he had taken from the locker of teammate Mark Sweeney. The Chronicle's source confirmed the accuracy of the report and then stated Bonds' amphetamine test was known on the team because Bonds himself talked about it.
"Barry is the guy who went around telling everybody he tested positive," said the source, who requested anonymity because of the confidentiality issues surrounding drug testing.
Last season marked the first time baseball tested players for amphetamines, drugs whose use has been believed widespread in the game for years. Unlike the game's amped-up steroids policy, which calls for players to be banned 50 games for a positive test, players are referred for treatment or counseling the first time they are caught using a stimulant. They also are subject to six additional tests and can be subject to other unannounced testing.
The policy does not require that the team be notified of a player's first positive test for amphetamines, according to an MLB spokesman.
In a statement released today, Giants officials noted that policy, saying, "Last night was the first time we heard of this recent accusation against Barry Bonds."
The major league source said Bonds told people on the Giants, "Now, I have to get tested more.'"
There wasn't much reaction to the positive test around the team, according to the source, although there was "a little buzz" when people found out that Bonds had dragged Sweeney into situation.
Sweeney declined comment, but his agent, Barry Axelrod, told the Daily News that Sweeney didn't supply Bonds with drugs.
"Mark was made aware of the fact that his name had been brought up, but he did not give Barry Bonds anything, and there was nothing he could have given Barry Bonds," Axelrod told the newspaper.
Bonds' positive drug test came at a time when he was already under scrutiny by both a federal grand jury and Major League Baseball for his suspected use of steroids and other banned drugs.
In 2003, federal agents in the BALCO steroids case seized doping calendars and other evidence indicating that Bonds had been using steroids, human growth hormone and undetectable performance-enhancing drugs distributed by the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative in Burlingame.
In sworn testimony before a federal grand jury that year, Bonds denied using banned drugs, claiming that his trainer, Greg Anderson, was supplying him only with flaxseed oil and an arthritis balm-- substances that matched the descriptions of "the clear" and "the cream," two performance-enhancing drugs that were at the heart of the BALCO case.
Suspecting that Bonds was lying, the government began investigating whether he had committed perjury in his grand jury testimony.
Anderson later pleaded guilty to steroid conspiracy charges in the BALCO case. Last year, he was convicted of contempt of court and imprisoned after he refused to answer questions about Bonds and steroids before the federal grand jury investigating Bonds for perjury.
Bonds also is a focus of an internal baseball investigation into the sport's steroid era. That probe is being conducted by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell. It is unknown whether either probe will be completed before the start of the 2007 baseball season, when Bonds is set to resume his assault on Henry Aaron's record for career home runs, perhaps the most hallowed record in sports.
Steroids expert Charles Yesalis, professor emeritus at Penn State, said the use of amphetamines in baseball has been well-chronicled over the years, primarily as a means of helping players keep from wearing down.
"They could be performance-enhancing in two ways," Yesalis said. "The most common way historically over the decades was to help the players deal with the tedium of 162 games, the road trips, going out partying and recuperating the next day."
Players also talk about how the use of stimulants "allows you to be maybe more focused when you bat." He added that he knew of no scientific tests to confirm the drugs helped you focus.
Chronicle staff writer John Shea contributed to this report.
